A blog that wants to become famous. The blog, not me. I just want a nice car, and some gas money.

Monday, July 03, 2006

She's free as a bird now

CNN.com just told me that Lil' Kim got released from prison today, only 10 months into her year and a day sentence, for good behavior. Welcome back. What we did without your juggs and pasties I'll never know.

Sorry to anyone offended by that boob shot up there but if it makes you feel any better they're not real. (If it didn't pop up for someone, I think you can right-click and select "View Image" and then you can see it. I think.)

So this weekend was HOT! And I know cuz I was outside in it from 7 am Sat. until I got into Focus to drive home at 5 pm on Sun. Luckily we did have the righteous Clemson Chemistry EZ-Up and an additional blue tarp for some extra shadiness, so there was shade but that didn't change the fact that it was 94ish and humid on both days.

But this was essentially a regional level event for the SCCA. There were representatives from at least 8 states who had made their way down to the GCFG (Gwinnett County FairGrounds) for the Doublecross Challenge. (for a description of what that is scroll down a post or three) As soon as we showed up, I knew we were in trouble. Corvettes, S2000s, lightweight Civics, Camaros, STIs and they all were on fancy pants race rubber and were all built to the limit of their respective classes. So we hadn't spent as much money on our cars as these folks, or hadn't bought a Civic just so we could be competitive, but it's all in the name of fun and seat time, so we were ready. We is the usual suspects of myself and Focus, Protege in his Turboed Protege and Subaru in his WRX. They broke the classes up a bit differently than normal. I race in FSP (F Street Prepared) with the SCCA, and they lumped all the Street Prepared classes together and then our times were compared to the fastest person in that big group. Unfortunately our group leader was a Subaru STI on gigantic 315 (11.8 inches wide) sticky sticky tires. And also I was reading through my GrassRoots Motorsport this morning and that car was featured and placed 7th and 8th in the nation last year. Great. So he set a time that was way too fast for little Focus to catch and screwed up everyone's times. The times were not used as slowest or fastest but as a speed index against other classes. So when I raced a Street Tire class, they would have a half second head start against my Street Prepared car.

But it was a great weekend. We finally got the chance to see some nationally ranked drivers (aside from the handful we have at Clemson) and nationally ranked cars and see how we stacked up against them. Hopefully they'll have results up soon so I can check how it all panned out. I did lose both of my elimination races but it was still a total of 10 runs including practice and qualifying, so it wasn't a total wash. Protege also lost both of his elimiations but that is mostly because he is in the Street Modified class which is essentially unlimited and has some crazy fast cars, at least on a national level. But Subaru lost his first, and then won his next two races! It was very exciting. He did end up losing to a VW GTI at the end though, but he was a Clemson graduate, so we at least kept it in the family.

I lost to a Civic and an Integra; both real big surprises. I'm honestly getting sick of losing to Civics but I can't afford to go pick one up and who wants to drive a Honda anyway? You know I'm just kidding, mostly jealous actually. Maybe Ford should think about stealing a few Japanese engineers to come design their next car. Hondas are so well balanced and neutral and lightweight that they really are that tough to beat.

We shared some of our shade with a few folks from the East TN region SCCA who came down from Knoxville and one of their competitors only had one arm (left arm). Seriously. A friend was telling us that he drives with his knee while he reaches over and SHIFTS! And he was pretty fast too! I was very impressed and it's nice to know that even if I lose an arm, I can still compete. Very nice guy too.

We did run across a few shade squatters. The Knoxville folks were polite and asked if they could share our tent (EZ-Up), and with the tarp extension, there was plenty of space, so no big deal. But I was coming back from a run and walk under the tent and see some chick sitting in my chair. "Weird" but I didn't feel like sitting down so I let it slide. Then noticed another one in Protege's chair. WTF? Who are these people? Oh snap, they're tent squatters! So I let them enjoy the precious shade a little longer and then they saw our other friends walking over and they made a hasty retreat. Apparently they had been kicked out of our tent before and recognized Protege's girlfriend and split. Very odd but understandable.

We're having people over to our place for fireworks and dessert and we'll probably grill also tomorrow. What are you doing to celebrate our kicking the redcoats asses?